Reviving Digital Projects

Abstract

What do you do when you are in charge of assessing and reviving an abandoned digital project you had no part in creating or implementing? This article will talk about the unique challenges and issues involved in such a project, drawing from a specific example at the University of Michigan Library. We contended with unfamiliar software, limited technical documentation, proprietary file formats and platform migration, and will discuss how we approached each of these specific technical issues. After reviving our project and reflecting on our process, we put together a list of guidelines that we feel will help assist others who may find themselves in similar situations.